Jim Phillips

I have been working at the University of Glasgow since 1995, after education at the Universities of Aberdeen (MA First Class Honours in History, 1986-90) and Edinburgh (History PhD, 1990-94).

I take pride in my role as an educator. Helping our students at Glasgow is my first priority. I hugely enjoy supporting the learning of undergraduates and post-graduates. At all times I encourage student participation and involvement. I emphasise the benefits of cooperative learning, where students work closely together.

I have recently entered my third decade of happy service as a member of the MA Social Sciences student advising team at the University. As one of the Senior Advisers I welcome new undergraduates to our community and support continuing students as they progress towards completing their degrees.

Research is an important feature of my role as educator and citizen. I explore the historical dimensions of one of the core problems in our contemporary world: how individuals and communities identify and pursue their economic security. My research shows that well-regulated paid employment and labour organisation are central to this objective.

The loss of manual employment in industrial sectors and the diminution of trade-union voice in workplaces has contributed to the erosion of economic security in many countries across the world. I have contributed to understanding of this vial global issue through my pioneering research on deindustrialisation in Scotland. This has explained popular understanding of changes in industry and employment through the critical application of a moral economy framework. Whether people understood their transition out of industrial employment as just or fair depended on the extent to which their security was protected, and their voices were heard, by policy-makers.

With Jim Tomlinson and Valerie Wright, I showed that deindustrialisation in Scotland was a long-running, phased and politicised process. It was managed carefully by policy-makers in the 1960s and 1970s, and recklessly in the 1980s and 1990s. Workers and communities affected by deindustrialisation understood their experiences in moral economy terms, seeking at times to protect security through collective action. The perceived injustices of deindustrialisation contributed significantly to the growth of support for Home Rule within the UK in from the 1960s to the 1990s and then for Independence in the 2000s. Our book, Deindustrialisation and the Moral Economy in Scotland since 1955, was published in 2021.

My 2019 book, Scottish Coal Miners in the Twentieth Century, analysed a key group of industrial workers and their struggles for workplace justice and economic security. The book used generational analysis to highlight changes over time and demonstrated how miners took a leading role in the campaign for Home Rule. The miners’ resistance to deindustrialisation reflected the importance of their moral-economy thinking. The great strike of 1984-85 was an unsuccessful attempt to prevent an unjust transition from taking place. My next book, Justice, Memory and the Miners’ Strike in Scotland, analyses this process. It relates the campaign in the 2020s for restorative justice in coal communities to the criminalisation and victimisation of striking miners in 1984-85.

My two earlier books examined the miners' strike of 1984-85 in Scotland, focusing on workplace and community factors, and the industrial and economic basis of devolution in Scotland. I am also the co-author, with Michael French, of a study of food regulation and safety in the UK from the 1870s to the 1930s, and the author of a book on labour organisation among British dock workers in the 1940s and 1950s.